Gateways: Between the Scales of Destitution and Ascension

I was excited for this because I really enjoyed their first album. However, I was ultimately disappointed. It's too many interludes and not enough black metal.

The songs are really good, and many have their own interesting identities. Gateway III is the one cheerful, triumphant song at the middle of the album. Gateway IV has an amazing breakdown taken straight out of brutal death - slam riffs and pinch harmonics. Raw black slam?! I've wanted that all my life, sign me up. The closing track brings a climactic intensity, the chaos you would see in something like Gorgoroth's Under the Sign of Hell, after a long hour of more moody, melodic tracks.

The problem is that despite really solid songs, so much time is taken up in different interludes.

A new thing the band has added is acoustic portions, which were not in the first album, and work really well with the overall sound. I'm reminded most of the amazing in-town soundtrack of Tristram in Diablo 1, or the break after 'Hidden in a Fog' on Behemoth's first album. Several ghostly portions come throughout the album, and I love them, and I would be happy if the band left it at just that. That's enough moody melody to calm the listener down and create contrast between the heavy metal songs.

The problem is that there's not just these acoustic breaks - there's also annoying spoken word sections and an "ambient" fade out after the last song. A female voice whispering which you may or may not be able to understand... she goes on about "loving someone in the moment". I understand it's supposed to be an introspective piece but it feels like something out of emo music, and very teenaged, which I don't really want to hear here. Two of those spoken word segments plus an uninteresting ambient hum at the end pad out 15-20 extra minutes here... and if it was all left out, the album would be much better.

As I said though, the music itself is really enjoyable. You can hear the bass which is not common in the genre and it jangles so deliciously in the first song. The drumming has heavy cymbal work which I love. The music is pulled from a variety of sources and comes together as a patchwork of meloncholia... but it's just a bit bloated.